Nigerian B2B ID Verification Startup, Youverify, Wraps Up USD 1.5 Mn Seed Round

The Nigerian startup known as Youverify, which is providing ID and background check services for Africa, has roped in USD 1.5 Mn in seed funding two years after raising an undisclosed pre-seed round.

That pre-seed round of 2018 was led by US-based venture capital (VC) firm, Village Capital with participation from Nigerian VC, Chinook Capital.

However, the just-announced USD 1.5 Mn seed round was led by Orange Digital Ventures Africa alongside LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund.

The latter is a West African early-stage technology fund that has previously backed top startups such as Andela, Flutterwave and Reliance HMO.

Founded in 2017, Youverify operates from Lagos, Nigeria, helping automate due diligence and compliance by using data-driven decisions for the financial services, and telecommunication industries

The startup serves up APIs for address and identity verification in Africa while also helping organisations with data and insight to make automated and efficient business decisions and speed up previously manual back-office processes.

In Africa where due is typically a drag, Youverify claims to offer a simple, nimble, easy-to-adopt, and cost-effective solution that eliminates the bottlenecks common with the customer-onboarding decisions, helping businesses to streamline these processes while reducing fraud, tedium, and cost.

Since its launch, the startup says it has processed registrations and verification for banks and companies like Sterling Bank, Bolt, Kobo 360, and NIPOST.

Youverify’s founder, Gbenga Odegbami, described the development as an opportunity for the company to take things to a whole new level and step closer to its goal of being the leading player in the identity verification space in Africa.

“This constitutes a unique opportunity for us to take further our ambition to simplify and secure our client’s internal processes, whether in the recruitment of staff, customer onboarding etc,” enthused Odegbami.

“Our ambition is to be the leading African player in verifying people’s and companies’ identities by making data protection and security the core of our proposal.”

On their part, Orange Digital Ventures Africa and Loftyinc are betting on Youverify having identified that the startup is on track for accelerated growth and execution of its technology roadmap.

Commenting on the decision to invest in Youverify, Idris Bello, Managing Partner at LoftyInc said:

“We are excited to back Youverify in its quest. The investment fits into our thesis of backing strong local founding teams with a bias towards execution, leveraging technology in solving key problems across Africa large markets.  We have worked closely with Gbenga and his team over the past year and are excited to joint ODV and others on this journey.”